Girlie was born with soft, black hair that was as lush as a bird’s nest. All the nurses couldn’t believe how fine, how voluminous and how delicate her hair was. Her smell was different too. And her skin! Unlike most newborns, with their distinct, unpasteurized milk-like scent and their soft-as-egg-white skin, Girlie smelled of wet air after a spring rain. And her ivory skin; it was as velvety as the petals of sampaguitas.

  As she blossomed from a bubbly baby into a penguin-waddling toddler, every encounter she had with the family, (the aunties, uncles, cousins, distant relatives and honorary lolas and lolos) compliments rolled out of their tongues like church songs of praise. “Oh, such lovely black hair!”, and “Oh, such soft, pearly skin for a cute little child!” Her mother and father were, of course, proud to hear all of this. After all, Girlie was a combination of their finest genes.

  But as more years passed on and as she gingerly stepped onto that rickety, rackety bridge between the prepubescent stage and adolescence, she no longer heard those compliments. Instead of the adoring looks she’d grown accustomed to receiving, she felt the burn of the grownups’ stares with secret jokes dancing behind their brown irises and closed lip smiles.

  Confused, Girlie wondered why things suddenly went sour. Did she do something bad? Was she afflicted with something they knew, and she was the only one blissfully unaware?

  She peered at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her long black hair was still fine and voluminous, but now there was fur everywhere on her gangly body—legs, arms and pits, and even some peach fuzz on her upper lip. Her brows had also thickened and bridged over the glabella to make one long, thick caterpillar.

  She had tried to shave them all with a razor, only for them to sprout again, twice as thick and twice as stubborn!

  “Oh, look, the Swamp Thing!”

  Her mother pointed and cried in laughter, when Girlie had emerged from the tub. Her long, sopping wet hair that hung down like the column roots of a banyan tree. Upon hearing those words, she sank back into the water.

  And her skin…

  Girlie recalled one afternoon when an auntie tutted her. She was on the summit of the jungle gym, surveying the playground like a far-sea explorer with a paper towel tube for a telescope. Seagulls called, waves rushed up, winds roared, and then—

  “Stay out of the sun! You’ll get too dark!” the auntie had warned with frightening urgency.

  “Too dark? Was it that awful to be dark?" Girlie asked herself.

  Under the bright light, she inspected closely the skin of her arms, face, shoulders, and legs. Skin as smooth as sand dunes and as brown as roasted chestnuts.

  She had overheard one auntie say to her mother and to the other aunties, who had gathered around her like a flock of eager little birds excited to peck at the gossip bread, “Girlie was so cute as a baby! But now… Maybe a witch had cursed her. She’s starting to look more like a manananggal!”

  Mom and the other aunties shrieked with laughter. And this crumb of gossip was then pecked by a cousin, another chismosa in the family. He then shared it with the other cousins and anyone well within earshot. Whenever Girlie would walk into a room, whispers whirled about her like a swirl of rustling leaves, and eyes lit up with every secret joke. And when she passed by again, they waved their hands to their noses. Some even pinched their noses for a more emphatic cruelty.

  “The stink of a manananggal,” they murmured amongst each other.

  She smelled her hands, her feet, her pits. Though she had scrubbed herself from head to toe, and doused herself with perfume, when she passed, they still scrunched up their faces and pinched their noses. Still, they whispered, with a little more disgust, “Ew, ew, ew…that’s a manananggal, for sure!”

  Was it true? Was she becoming a manananggal? A vampiric creature of the night whose body would split in half and fly away, leaving behind its legs, as it hunted for prey.

  Again, she looked closely at her arm, and brushing the short hairs aside, spotted a patch of gray scaly skin. Days later, more and more patches of gray scales appeared here and there on her arms and legs, shoulders, and neck.

  Papaya soap! Mother believed that it would fix things right up and brighten up the skin. But all it did was irritate Girlie’s skin further and further. Then the scales spread further.

  Her eyes once sparked with youthful energy and an appetite for adventure. But now, they had darkened with a hidden rage. They had also become more sensitive to sunlight. Only at night did she see things clearer. Her eyes magnified objects a hundred times like no other human.

  “Your mole looks like it has a mouth of its own. Do you talk to it sometimes?” she told one of the aunties who had a short stubby cactus of a mole on her chin.

  The auntie’s eyes narrowed, and her nostrils flared.

  And her sense of smell... how much it had sharpened! She smelled all sorts of things no one else could. Every odor was ten times stronger! When she passed by the cousins, it was her turn to scrunch up her face and wave a hand to her nose.

  “You stink of pigs rolling in piss!” she told them, and to the elders, she blurted, “Did you bathe in old sour milk?”

  Glaring, they stomped their feet and scowled.

  “Oy, Girlie, that’s not nice!” Mother scolded; eyes fired up with anger.

  She couldn’t care less. When pushed to apologize, she bared her teeth. Sharp gasps rippled about the room, then stunned silence. Without apology, Girlie stormed out of the living room, raced up the stairs and shut herself in her room with curtains drawn.

  She peered in the mirror, carefully studying her teeth. They were larger, pointier! Like the teeth of a wolf! Maybe she was indeed becoming a manananggal.

  Her appetite changed. Her palate desired meat—not just meat, but raw flesh. She had a taste of raw meat, when a slab of steak had been left on the counter, waiting to be cooked. She took a nibble, then another bite, then another after another until she had devoured it all. The insatiable appetite for blood had overwhelmed all her senses; the craving was far too strong for her to resist.

  Her appetite grew stronger and stronger by the day. More than once she found herself burning a hole with her stare through the back of a classmate’s neck. Delicate, sweet, delicious supple flesh...if only she could just have a little nibble, a little bite, a little sip of his blood.

  “Why are you looking at him like that?” a girl sitting in the desk next to hers asked, an amused yet bewildered expression on her face. Other heads around them turned, even the boy with the fleshy neck.

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  Girlie’s cheeks were on fire. “I...”

  “You like him, don’t you?” a sneer on her lips. Then, loudly, she announced to everyone with an exaggeratedly sweet voice about Girlie’s burning carnal passion for the boy with the fleshy neck. The room broke into fits of laughter, made hearts with their fingers, howled ‘woooo!’ and made dumb faces.

  The excitement was, however, cut short. The students stood dumbfounded and scared. The girl who started it all hung in the air. Her neck—her very life—was in Girlie’s supernatural grip. The tighter the grip, the more her eyes bulged. Like a golden tortoise beetle, her color changed from different shades of pink to red to maroon. She would have turned purple if it weren’t for the teacher, who was forced out of his own little world by all the noise, putting a stop to the chaos.

  “See me after class!”

  But the order was directed only at Girlie, who then dropped the girl. She fell to the floor like a ragged doll, gasping for air. Then she shrank back into her chair and hid behind her black curtains of hair.

  When the school bell had rung and all the students fled quickly like escaped prisoners, Girlie stood before the teacher and principal. Her eyes peered at them through the black curtains as her fidgety fingers picked at the gray scaly patch on the back of her left hand.

  The teacher scrunched up his nose and frowned. “I know it’s difficult to be your age. All emotions rush up at you all at once. So many feelings, so many hormones running amok. But it’s no excuse for your bad actions.”

  A two-week suspension. And the loss of privilege to attend the school’s Autumn Dance.

  The world needed to burn. It needed to be flung straight into the sun by a Great Power! But her lips remained sealed. She only grunted in reply, pretending to accept the punishment given with silent grace.

  The teacher nodded, seemingly satisfied. The principal nodded, smiling in self-congratulation for putting his foot down and validating his authority. Both remained oblivious to her glowing fury.

  She ached all over. Her muscles were sore, and her bones were throbbing. Her shoulder blades burned; something was poking out from the gray scaly skin. With her nimble fingers, she reached over and felt a strange leathery hardness protruding from an opening.

  She stripped off her shirt and turned to the mirror. Large bat-like wings appeared from her back. They unraveled and stretched out twice the length of her arms. Stunned, she stood with mouth agape, both awed and horrified. And as suddenly as they appeared, the leathery wings darted back into her, leaving a clear syrupy pus along the slits in her flesh from which they came.

  And then there was another pain. A dull throbbing ache in her belly had emerged, just below her belly button. Looking down, she noticed another red slit, this time across her waist. It stung when touched, and little droplets of blood trickled onward to the ground. And then her world began to shatter. The no, no place...the unspoken and forbidden spot now leaked blood and soaked her underwear.

  I’m dying, she thought. Panic rose steadily, and once it seemed as if the floor was crumbling under her feet, the world spun uncontrollably around her.

  At first, she told no one of her impending doom, until during dinner, when Mother thought she looked rather ill and asked what was wrong. It wasn’t until that moment that the dam burst, and the waterworks streamed down Girlie’s cheeks.

  “I think I’m dying! Dying!” she cried.

  “Dying?”

  “Yes, dying!”

  Then Girlie spilled out her horror of finding blood...down there...

  Confused, Father and the uncles furrowed their brows.

  “Where?”

  Hiccups. Snot. Sniffles. “Down...there...”

  The cousins scrunched up their noses. “Wait, what? Where?”

  “DOWN THERE!”

  Mother and the aunties glanced at one another. Amused grins split their faces. The cactus-like mole also flashed a broad smile.

  “You’re not dying,” they said, chuckling.

  “I’m not? Then why is it happening?” Sniffles. Snot. Hiccups.

  “Oh, you’re still too young to know!” one said.

  “It just happens; it’s natural,” another chimed.

  “But know that you’re not dying!”

  The aunties threw their heads back and cackled. And Mother handed her what looked like a diaper. But Girlie still could not understand why all these things were happening. Why, why, why was all she thought. No one at the table would answer. Or perhaps they were too embarrassed to talk about such things.

  On the night of the full moon, a strange sensation swept through her. During the day she had felt tired and lethargic. Already she had napped twice in the afternoon, and yet an overwhelming drowsiness still lingered. Then, as night approached and the moon shone through the window, she was alert and hungry...very hungry.

  The gray scales now covered her from head to foot. Her fingers stretched long with sharpened claws. Her fangs protruded outwards, and her eyes beamed; blood-red and sharp. With eager ears pointed she listened to the heartbeats near and far.

  Her family’s bulging eyes back in abject terror. Their jaws dropped in unison. Then her wings popped out, expanding from wall to wall, spreading their darkness across the room. As they flapped and lifted her up, the cut around her waist widened until she detached completely from her lower body, leaving puddles of blood. With a joyful scream, Girlie shot through the window into the full moon night.

  She’d never felt so free!

  And never so ravenous!

  The stray cats were the first to disappear. They slinked into the dark alleys, sniffing the dumpster, when suddenly their whiskers and tail went rigid, sensing an unsettling presence hovering above them. They hissed, yowled and bared their fangs, and scratched the air. And then...silence.

  The working young man who’d haul the trash out into dumpsters in the alley, thought it very odd not to see the scavenging street cats he’d grown familiar with. He scratched his head, searched around and whistled hoping they’d hear him call. But then the hairs on his neck and arms stood straight up, and his spine went rigid. He dared himself to look up, and when he did, it was instant regret.

  When the young employee didn’t return from trash duty, the restaurant owner grew impatient and believed the boy was loitering in the alley again, to have a smoke. The owner went out to check but stopped abruptly when his foot stepped into a puddle. Letting out a miserly grunt, he lifted his foot and saw that his sock was soaked in red.

  The light from the wide opened back door shined on a severed leg and a severed cat’s head with a missing eye floating in a large pool of blood. Hearing wings flapping above, he looked up and nearly jumped out of his skin. He scrambled back in and screamed for help.

  When the cops arrived, they cordoned off the alley. They took pictures of the gruesome scene and spoke with the owner, though they struggled to hide their amusement while taking notes of his description of a winged creature. But dispatch radioed them about a sighting of a creature matching the description: glowing furious eyes, bat wings, a mouth with rows of bloody fangs, and entrails dangling at the waist.

  As the town slowly became more alert about this winged creature, the school gymnasium roared with unbridled excitement. The walls vibrated from the DJ’s music. The Autumn Dance was on fire. The students swirled on excited feet. They swung and leapt and flipped in time to the beat. The music muffled the noise of a rooftop window breaking. The flapping of wings was welcomed as they spread a cool breeze for those feeling hot and stuffy.

  Feeling his mouth grow parched, the boy with the fleshy neck, sweating profusely from dancing, went straight for the refreshment. As he gulped down a cup of punch, something slimy slithered across his neck like someone was licking him. But satisfying his thirst and appetite was more urgent, and so he poured himself another cup and shoveled a couple of cookies into his mouth. He stopped mid-bite when he felt it again.

  This time he looked up.

  She woke up in the middle of the school’s football field. To her great relief, the gray scales and wings were gone. And at some point, in the blurry chaotic night, her legs had found her and reattached themselves to her body.

  She sat up and inhaled the fresh morning air, listening to the sirens of a fire truck and ambulances blaring somewhere off in the distance.

  As she was about to jump to her feet, something moved beside her, and glancing over, she realized she wasn’t alone. The boy with the fleshy neck, now riddled with hickeys, sat up next to her, grinning stupidly.

  “Oh, what a night!”

  Girlie shrugged. “It was okay.”

  “I thought it was a fun night! Just wild!”

  She looked over to the school buildings. Plumes of smoke rose from the gymnasium, its windows broken, and bloody handprints scaled the walls.

  “I guess I really surprised everyone,” she said.

  “Yeah, they won’t be bothering you anymore. That’s for sure.”

  The faint echoes of her classmates’ screams still rang in her ears.

  “So, what should we do now?” he asked.

  “Well, I don’t really want to go home just yet...” Her family must be furious. Home was the last place she wanted to go.

  “You hungry?” He glanced at her, hopefully, his stomach grumbling.

  Hers also cried for food.

  “I don’t usually eat breakfast but, yeah, I could eat.”

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